It's a historic moment for me and mobile navigation technology. I'm happily to announce that my TomTom GPS unit and UBD paper street maps are formally retired today.

Technology was evolved so fast nowadays. I still remembered that I give Google Maps Navigation on my mobile a try just about same time last year, and the result is terrible. It navigate me to a toll road, which I did set to avoid the toll road. And even worse, the toll gate accept cash only, and I didn't bring any cash with me, resulting a chaos in the car to find coins from others. Not to mention the terrible voice or no voice at all, and missing the warning of speed limit and camera. I quickly gave up the try and back to TomTom GO 730 unit.

But, I kept my eyes on Google Maps Navigation and kept hoping it will become better and better. They did. At July, 2012, I decided to give another go for Google Maps Navigation on my lovely Android phone. Surprisingly, I didn't feel so bad this time, and kept using it till now. Google fixed the voice, corrected the toll road, fixed the music volume problem, the route is more reasonable, offline map is available now, and it even dim the screen when we on the highway to save the battery. Although, there still are some key features missing, such as speed limit sign, warning of speeding and camera[1][2][3], and multiple stops navigation, it is a lot better than before, and become competitive to the traditional GPS navigation unit.

I really love some features which smartphone are easily to do and traditional navigation unit cannot. The smartphone is always online, so wherever I use the Google Maps, such as, on my desktop browser, on my tablet, or on my android phone, I can search and add favorite place to my places, and it is right there on my mobile. I don't need to write down the address and add it manually, like what I did on the traditional GPS navigation unit. It's easy to fetch the traffic data and overlap on the map to let me know what is going on. On my TomTom unit, I still cannot figure out how to fetch the traffic data, even follow the manual. Finding place is another win for Google Maps. Traditional navigation unit always have outdated and limited Point of Interest database. But Google Maps has much more POIs and it's dynamic. Since Google MapMaker launched in Australia, there are many updated places added to Google Maps, many outdated places has been corrected, and more and more users contribute their time to update the road network information. It is dynamic maps, it is changing at every moment. It can get location or address from anywhere, such as Web browser, social network, message, contacts, or even NFC or Bluetooth, it's not necessary to type address in many cases. And even more, satellite view, or even street view, biking navigation, public transit direction, indoor maps(not available at Australia, yet), and etc. Nothing here like the traditional navigation unit. I enjoy it.

After more than 3 months usage of Google Navigation on my Android phone, I'm confident to say that Google Navigation is good enough to replace the traditional GPS navigation unit and the paper street maps. Although it haven't been perfect, I decide to use Google Maps on my Android phone as the navigation unit for my daily uses, and retire my TomTom navigation unit and the paper street maps from now. TomTom Go 730 is my first and the last traditional GPS navigation unit.

I believe, more and more people will follow this way, and at one day in the future, the current traditional GPS navigation unit will finally become a history. And I also believe, smartphone will replace more and more traditional units we are using today, such as Camera, USB stick, Car's entertainment center and climate or other electronic control unit, door lock keys, credit cards, home's appliance, lighting, and climate control unit, TV remote control, paper scanner and more, more than you can imagine.